Barry Patterson

Serving a higher purpose as an individual can change one’s life in many ways, including by helping create a more meaningful life. While many people immediately think of a higher purpose as being a spiritual or religious one, it often is, but it does not have to be.

What about a business? Can a business serve a purpose greater than profits and grow and thrive?  Can a business serve a higher purpose that is, essentially, non-tangible, and can that higher purpose be a primary driver of the organization?  Can it also be a driver of the greater system, or the industry, wherein the organization exists and thrives?

Whole Foods seems to provide a well-known roll model.  Co-founder John Mackey believes that business should be based on a deeper purpose and core values.

What’s interesting though, is it seems to require a higher/deeper purpose to be in place for core values to be upheld.  From a behavioral standpoint, people will often forgo their values to meet their needs.  However, if a higher purpose is in place, it can become the primary driving, and guiding, force.  For Whole Foods, that guiding higher purpose that serves as the driver, is The Heroic.

List 10 companies off the top of your head, and then picture what the word “heroic” brings to mind.  Any matches?  And I’m talking the company here, not an individual leader.

When Mackey asked the question, “Why can’t businesses aspire to the highest values that have inspired humans throughout history?” it actually made me feel better.  That’s what I’m striving to do, and I know of many others striving to do the same.  There is no reason why ‘doing something good’ and doing something for the ‘betterment of society’ and for the ‘betterment of the planet’ has to be relegated to the non-proft world or to philianthropists.  Business can be like other organizations and human communities that have sought change.

There are a range of value models, and Mackey talks about Plato’s The Good, The True, and The Beautiful. For years he thought Whole Foods purpose was in the realm of The Good. Then, and what is relevant for companies and communities is that Whole Foods higher purpose didn’t come from Mackey, the co-founder.  He actually saw the company as a service that was fulfilling The Good.

He would travel around to stores, talk about his idea of Conscious Capitalism and poll Team Members on what they thought the company’s higher purpose was.  75% of the surveys came back saying it was The Heroic.  Whole Foods Team Members are very passionate about what they do, and when the majority kept telling Mackey he was wrong, that their greater purpose was The Heroic, he finally gave in.  Now he says, “I think Whole Foods purpose is a Heroic one. To change and improve the world. To stand up for what you believe is true and right….Once you connect into the hero myth, to the mythology for yourself, you’re more conscious of your purpose, and when you are more conscious of your purpose, you are in a greater position to realize it.”

An active consciousness of purpose, then, is central if a company (or organization, or community, or individual) is able to fully engage with it beyond a conceptual model.  In an interview with Mackey on Big Think he states, “…you need to have conscious businesses, and a conscious business is one that becomes conscious of its higher purpose.  A purpose is very important to the conscious business.  It’s not just about maximizing profits and shareholder value.  It’s becoming aware of the deeper purpose that a business has.” He goes on to say that, “you have to create a conscious culture, a culture that its strategies, structures and processes allow the organization to fulfill its higher purpose…”

With the higher purpose firmly in place, Whole Food’s Team Members have a single focal point that can serve as the guiding force behind all of their Core Values.  As stated on the company website, Whole Foods Core Values are:

Selling the highest quality natural & organic products available. This includes descriptive statements such as:

• We have helped improve the health, well-being, & longevity of millions of people and proven that good health & pleasurable eating are compatible goals

• We are resisting the trend toward the degradation of our food through the industrialization of food production

• We are creating animal compassionate production standards

Satisfying & delighting our customers.

• The customer is #1, the most important stakeholder—no customers, no business

• We design the business around the customer

• Team Members must be empowered to satisfy & delight customers

• Happy customers create happy investors

Supporting Team Member happiness & excellence.

• Team Members are the #2 constituency

• Self-managing teams are the organizational cells of the business

• Importance of shared purpose & empowerment—conscious rejection of command & control management

• “100 Best Companies to Work For” 9 years in a row

Creating wealth through profits & growth.

• The investors are the #3 constituency

• We are stewards of the investors’ money–frugality is important

• Business has the fundamental responsibility to create prosperity for our society & the world

• Whole Foods is the fastest growing & most profitable public food retailer in the U.S. in terms of percentages

• Whole Foods stock price has increased 3000% since our IPO in 1992

Caring about our communities & our environment. Descriptive statements include:

• Business is best thought of as a “citizen” existing in communities

• As citizens businesses have responsibilities to their communities

• Strongly support organic, sustainable, and local agriculture

• Sustainable seafood – marine Stewardship Council

• Commitment to recycling and alternative energy.

A greater purpose can also, in effect, limit greed which can run rampant and destroy the quality of a company. Mackey believes that, “The owners/investors must legally control the business to prevent their exploitation by management & the other constituencies.  They get paid last.”  There are also limits.  Whole Foods keeps the CEO’s pay limited to $14 for every $1 the average full-time Team Member earns.  In 1982 in the US, the average ratio, CEO : average worker, was 42:1.  In 2009 it was 263:1.

Profits, according to Mackey, are best achieved by not making them the primary goal.  He believes a better model for business than the industrial model is to think of business as a “complex system of interdependent constituencies” and it is management’s job to optimize the health and value of the entire system, because “all the constituencies are connected together and effect one another.” “Optimizing the health and value of the entire interdependent system and all of the major constituencies,” also according to Mackey, “will also result in the highest long-term shareholder value.”

Whole Foods Sustainability Vision is definitely worth the read.  Among other insights, it states that “Businesses will harness human and material resources without devaluing the integrity of the individual or the planet’s ecosystems.”  Whole Foods – Whole People – Whole Planet is their motto, and the business model is Holistic Interdependence. 

The Whole Foods Holistic Interdependence Business Model diagram:

Of course there are reasons one could throw punches at Whole Foods, as there are with any organization.  However, I am especially taken aback when I here quote “sustainability guru’s” hammer them in one interview, then praise Wal-Mart in another interview.  What’s up with this?

I too have been to Bentonville to one of Wal-Mart’s “sustainability summits.”  I was blown away by all that they are doing and striving to do in regards to sustainability.  Their efforts in ‘shining a sustainability light’ on their supply chains (as one of the exec’s spoke to me about it) is laudable.  However, to diminish Whole Foods and praise Wal-Mart?  There are probably 100 reasons that could be listed (or even thousands, if you went SKU by SKU) as to why that scenario should be flipped.

One reason I find is at the check-out of each store.  At the check out at Whole Foods you won’t find dozen’s of candy bars and tabloid magazines.  You find all of that, as well as another dozen  ‘cheap plastic’ things at Wal-Mart.  Being a parent, Whole Foods approach here is greatly appreciated.  The second reason could be Whole Foods support for local farmers and local businesses. I enjoy seeing a picture of the farmer’s produce I am purchasing. (Meaning, when we miss a the trip to the farmers market one week, or when our CSA doesn’t have something specific…as both of those options are ahead of any trip to Whole Foods.)

Agreed, John Mackey has done a few things that are less than admirable, and they have been reported widely.  I do not understand where he gets his science from when it comes to discussing climate change.  And, I’m also disheartened at the recent news stories about Whole Foods taking sides to support Monsanto’s genetically modified alfalfa.  The main reason being that, according to this article, Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and featured expert in the Oscar nominated film Food Inc said, “It’s hard to understand why the Obama administration would put the organic industry at risk for the sake of an unnecessary and soon-to-be obsolete product like Round-up Ready alfalfa. This is a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, since 93 percent of alfalfa hay is grown without any herbicide at all.”

While I enjoyed shopping at Whole Foods occasionally, one of the reasons I started paying more attention to the organization was after I heard Ken Wilbur interview Mackey.  It turns out Mackey uses the Integral AQAL model to help him as a leader.  Listening to the interviews really piqued my interest in both Mackey and Whole Foods.  Mackey talks about how Integral businesses are more efficient, more effective, and more resilient.

As I began to freqent the store more often, I was often amazed by the people who work there. They are by far some of the most helpful and informed employees that I have ever encountered…and this isn’t the Apple store, it’s a grocery store.  Actually, it’s much more than either a grocery store or a health food store, it’s an experience.  Many times when asking where something is, the person I’d asked would drop whatever they are doing, and walk me to what I was looking for.  In the health supplement section, everyone I’ve asked questions has been willing to discuss the items with me in depth. And most importantly for me, they all have positive, helpful attitudes.

Could it be because of a higher purpose?  I had to ask.  After getting some help finding an item in the health section I said, “I recently read an interview with your CEO.  he talks about Whole Foods having a higher purpose. Does this filter down?”  His reply, “It does at this store.  I don’t know about other stores, but I look forward to coming to work.  Everyone here does.”

Now, in early 2011, Whole Foods is helping tackle the health and obesity challenges.  “We’ve got a serious problems in the health of America, and I feel like Whole Foods has a big part in the answer,” Mackey said.  Among the changes Whole Foods is rolling out this year:

• Adding healthier prepared foods and baked goods in stores nationwide that meet new criteria such as sprouted grain bread with no refined flour, added oil, refined sugar or processed ingredients.

• Posting nutritional scorecards around markets to help shoppers choose foods with the most nutrients per calorie.

• Employing a specialist in healthy eating at each store to provide tips, tours and demonstrations for customers.

• Increasing services such as wellness clubs and nutrition
  

Wrap it all up, and Whole Foods becomes the first profile for Serving a Higher Purpose.

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